Reckless in Red

by Rachael Miles

  If she hadn’t overheard the men—if they hadn’t threatened his life if she remained with him—she would never have told him her truth. She would have held her secrets close, until he had grown tired of them. And their affair would have died a natural death, leaving her to mourn, but preserving his life. As it was, she could only console herself that by separating from him, she kept him safe.

  She’d had few illusions about marriage when she’d accepted Remberg’s proposal. Given their long friendship, she had expected a pleasant sort of companionship but no real passion. And she’d experienced nothing of married life, save for widowhood. But marriage to Clive would have been a different thing entirely. She hadn’t realized how much she wanted it until he was lost to her.

  The carriage seemed to travel immeasurably slow, then suddenly it had arrived. He followed her, without asking her permission, into Constance’s shop.

  The sound of women’s laughter met them as she stepped through the door at the African’s Daughter. As usual, Constance met her near the front of the store, embracing her with a relief that bespoke the depth of their friendship.

  “I’ve been so worried, even though Lady Wilmot assured me you were in good hands.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have sent you word myself. But . . .” Lena stopped as Clive entered the shop after her.

  Reading both their faces, Constance wrapped her arm around Lena’s shoulder. “I understand but.”

  Lena refused to cry. Tears would only give him hope. “The duke gave me your letter this morning. I came as soon as I could.”

  Constance leaned into Lena’s ear and whispered, “Horatio. He’s here.”

  Some of Lena’s fear and worry lifted. “Take me to him.”

  Constance looked back at Clive, who was standing awkwardly at the door, neither in nor out of the shop. “And Somerville?”

  Lena sighed. “He should come as well.”

  Constance led them past the laughing women to her office, a room in the middle of the shop, above which were her lodgings. “Above my apartment is another bedroom. He’d been hiding at your studio for days, thinking you would go there when you found his note. While you were in Derby, he came looking for you here. He’s been scared for you, but I’ll let him tell you the story.” She unlocked the door that led to the stairs. “There’s a way to escape over the roof, so call out when you reach my apartment, or he might run.”

  * * *

  The reunion with Horatio seemed to cheer Lena somewhat. The old man clasped her to his breast over and again, repeating, “Oh, my sweet girl, my sweet girl, you’re safe!”

  Clive stood watching, saying nothing until the old man dried his tears and motioned them both to chairs. Clive felt like he was watching the scene from a far distance. Even if he had no hopes for a future with Lena, he still had murderers to catch, and Horatio was the key.

  “Mr. Calder, or should I call you Mr. Byrne?” Clive’s voice sounded harsh even to his own ears, and Lena winced.

  “Lena here named me Calder, and I prefer that name to the one my father gave me.”

  “On the day you disappeared, you wrote that you had information regarding the murders.”

  “Didn’t you see it? I painted the culprits into the panorama.”

  “Someone destroyed the faces, Horatio.” Lena petted the old man’s arm. “But we found the map, and we went to Denby.”

  Calder shook his head slowly, racking his fingers across his bald pate. “Ah, I see. And you found the crypt.”

  Lena nodded, her eyes never leaving the old man’s face. “I did.”

  I. Not we.

  Suddenly resentful, Clive took control of the conversation. It was no longer their investigation; it was his. “Can you tell us about the murders, Mr. Calder?”

  Lena began to object, but bit the words back.

  Horatio sighed sadly. “We’d been losing men. Continental craftsmen all, and them the least likely to give up a paying job without having a better one. I’d known there was sentiment against them, so I searched for them, wanting to know if someone working for the Rotunda was at fault. But they’d simply disappeared.”

  He paused, patting Lena’s knee. “I’ve been so worried, my girl. I would never have left you alone if I’d realized you wouldn’t come to your studio.”

  “How do you know about the studio?” Lena furrowed her brow.

  “Ah, that’s another part of the story. But you found the packet—the papers I left you in the crypt.”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t read them?”

  Lena shook her head, apologetically.

  “Ah, then, when your friend here is gone, we’ll talk about what you’ve found.” He turned to Clive. “The papers have no relation to the murders.”

  “Then can we focus on the murders, Mr. Calder?” Clive said coldly.

  “Of course, of course. After my inquiries, the disappearances stopped, and I chalked the losses up to bad luck. But last week, one of our newer carpenters came to my office to tell me the names of other émigrés who had disappeared. He left, and I went back to my work, but I noticed that he’d left his cap on my desk. Thinking I could just throw it down to him, if he were still in the yard, I looked out the window.” The old man stopped, his voice close to breaking. “And there, in the yard, were four men loading his body into a cart. I must have made a sound, because they looked up, and, in the moonlight, I could see each of their faces. I’ll never forget their faces.” Horatio fell silent.

  “Oh, Horatio, what did you do?” Lena’s voice was full of affection and concern.

  “I hid, my dearie, hid like a small boy scared of the banshees. That’s when I wrote to you, Mr. Somerville, arranging a meeting.”

  “Lord Somerville, Horatio,” Lena corrected.

  “Ah.” Horatio looked from Lena to Clive, pursing his chin. “I see the way it is.” He patted Lena on the knee comfortingly.

  “The rest of the story, Mr. Calder,” Clive pushed. “You wrote to me arranging a meeting that you didn’t keep.”

  “No, I came to meet you, but when I arrived, one of the murderers was already speaking to you. I heard you call him Calder, and I knew they were waiting for me, so I ran again, and I wrote you a letter asking you to meet me at the Rotunda in two days’ time.

  “Sadly, the night before we were to meet, another of our crew asked if he could work late for extra pay. I gave him some work painting faces, and while he worked, I climbed the high scaffold to check the work on the upper curtains, as Lena had asked me to do. When I looked down next, I saw the murderers emerge from under the stage, come to remove their witness.”

  “Oh, Horatio!” Lena leaned into his arm, and Clive felt a raw fury at her obvious affection.

  “Please continue, Mr. Calder. I have murderers to find.”

  “Before I could shout a warning, one of the men bashed our painter’s head in. They rolled the body up in canvas and drug it outside. By the time I reached the back door, they were carrying him away in a cart. So I followed them, then I returned to the panorama and painted them into it: the murderers, the murdered man, and even the man who bought the body.”

  “Can you sketch them again?” Clive asked.

  The old man pulled out a roll of paper. “Already done, my boy, already done.”

  * * *

  Clive threw the sketches onto Joe’s desk and himself into a chair.

  He’d left Lena patting the old man’s knee and cooing over him as if he were a found puppy. In the long walk from the African’s Daughter to the secret division of the Home Office, he’d replayed every word Lena had told him, trying to recapture every hint of her emotions. He thought of her hands, clasped, one thumb rubbing the back of the other hand, and of her eyes, refusing to meet his. But most telling, he thought of the way her whole body had gone still, as if she were speaking to her confessor or a judge. She would have him believe she didn’t care for him, but her very refusal to let him see her emotion made her a liar.

  By
the time he’d arrived at the Home Office, he was certain both that she loved him, and that he had no chance on earth of convincing her of it.

  “Why are you in a foul mood?” Joe carried a carafe of wine to his desk. “Does it relate to your investigation or that interesting girl?”

  Clive pushed the papers toward his supervisor. “The top five are your murderers; the bottom ones are the men they are suspected of killing. Apparently, they frequent a tavern called the Blue Heron.”

  “We know. Your murderers are dead.” Joe picked up the pictures.

  “What?! No! They can’t be.”

  “Their bodies were left in a cart in front of your surgery school not an hour ago, with a note pinned to the top body.” Joe separated the sketches into murderers and murdered.

  “A note?”

  “There.” Joe pointed to a slip of paper on the corner of his desk: “They killed our men. We killed them.”

  Clive read the note silently and shook his head in disbelief. “Something’s wrong here. Calder said that the murdered men had no family here. That’s how their crimes went unsuspected for so long.”

  “Well, someone cared enough about the killings to poison the murderers.”

  “Poison.” Clive pressed his lips together in consideration. “Poison seems an odd choice here. It’s neither a political assassination nor a family member unwilling to wait for an inheritance.”

  “Perhaps it was a weapon of opportunity. We’ve gotten reports that our murderers left a local tavern, with a local beggar, half drunk and carrying a bottle of gin. Let’s see . . . I have the name of the tavern here.” Joe shuffled through a pile to his right.

  “The Blue Heron,” Clive predicted, retrieving the wooden carving from his desk. “That’s what Horatio meant by this. He was directing us to where we might find the murderers. Do you think the beggar or someone at the bar poisoned them?”

  “Given the poison’s speed, they were likely poisoned elsewhere.” Joe shook his head. “The surgery schools are watching for the beggar’s body.”

  “I can understand a revenge killing, but to advertise that you’ve done it seems a bit too neat to me.”

  “We’ll keep an open file, but without the beggar—or his body—we haven’t much to investigate. Besides, we have more pressing work here. We’d like you to go to Scotland to look into an unusual death there. The local magistrate is holding the body for you.”

  “Are you trying to get me out of London?”

  “Did the girl throw you over?”

  Clive grew silent.

  “Then, yes, we are trying to get you out of London. We almost never got the office back to its comfortably cluttered state after that Morley girl rejected you.”

  “The situations are not the same. I didn’t love Morley.”

  Joe sat silently for a few moments. “You love this woman?”

  “Don’t say it like that!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re surprised and pleased and gloating all at once.”

  Joe placed his hand on Clive’s shoulder. “Perhaps I’m merely happy that you have found someone to love. After all the publicity you suffered, I thought you might deny yourself the satisfaction of a real love.”

  “I wanted—want—to marry her, but she won’t have me. She says our future could never be free of her past. And I don’t know how I can convince her that’s not true.”

  “Is it? Not true, I mean. Or rather, is there anything that can be done to make it not true?”

  Clive thought for a moment. “Why not send Michaels to Scotland, and give me the resources to investigate a merchant bringing forged Old Master paintings from the Continent?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Lena, will you consider my advice?” Constance stood at the doorway to the room where Horatio was staying.

  “We are friends. I will consider anything you suggest.”

  “When you arrived, the Muses’ Salon had just begun their meeting.” Constance paused. “They were hearing requests for their help. Perhaps you might wish to talk with them?”

  “If they will entertain one more request, then yes.” Lena held out her hand to Constance. “But will you stay with me?”

  Constance looked surprised for only a moment. “Of course.” The pair made their way to the heart of the store.

  While Constance held her hand, Lena told her story. She knew—though she asked anyway—that the Muses would keep her secrets, if only for Clive’s sake. She detailed the whole of it, from her childhood as Helena Winters and her escape from Mrs. Edstein’s school to France under the protection of Le Brun, her art career as Lena Le Givre, including her forgeries and her marriage to Remberg, to her return as Mme. Remberg, then as Lena Frost to build the panorama and make her fame. She outlined the mysterious losses, the missing and dead craftsmen, the threat of some agent known as Charters, the attempts on her life, and her fears for Clive’s. She was on trial for her sins, and they were her jury.

  “You were so young when you left, and France was in such turmoil; it must have seemed like another life,” Lady Wilmot said gently.

  “That ten years could have been a hundred. I returned to a city I barely recognized, with no friends and only the money I had from Remberg’s estate.” Lena searched their faces for any indication of their responses.

  “But you hired craftsmen from the Continent? Wasn’t that a risk?” Ariel asked.

  “I hired the crews.” Horatio stepped from the shadows of the bookcases. “I took anyone who applied—men and women alike—to a tavern. After a filling meal and some drink, I asked about their lives, where they’d worked and for whom, what projects. Lena only saw the ones I felt comfortable hiring.” He put a protective arm around Lena’s shoulders, and she suddenly regretted all the times she’d begrudged him those meals.

  The Muses nodded at his answer, seemingly satisfied.

  “Clive will not allow a woman to be in danger without acting to protect her, and I cannot bear the thought of him being harmed—killed—because of me.”

  Lady Wilmot raised a finger. “Do you love him?”

  Lena blinked away tears. The question hit her in the gut. She should have expected it, given the duke’s unorthodox position on his brothers. “Even if I did . . . love him”—she paced out the words to keep from crying—“as long as he is associated with me, he is in danger.”

  “Clive since his boyhood has chosen to help when another is in trouble. He helped Mrs. Sinclair and her sisters with a full knowledge of the possible costs.” Judith’s voice was soft. “Shouldn’t you allow him to choose here as well?”

  “Then he would be choosing to die. These men have no qualms about killing.”

  “A wound to the soul can be worse than a wound to the body, Miss Frost, even a mortal one.” Lady Judith leaned forward, studying Lena’s face.

  “That’s why I’m asking for your help.” And she began to outline her plan.

  * * *

  “I have come for your help.”

  “Then we are your men. It’s about time for us to help you.” Carlin leaned forward toward Clive.

  “It must be a woman,” Battenskill interjected.

  “Why do you think that?” Clive felt exposed.

  “Because if it were anything else, you’d ask one of your troop of brothers,” Battenskill explained, and the other men nodded agreement.

  “The Somerville women have formed a salon to help others, and we should do the same. They are the Muses,” Garfleet, more foxed than the others, exclaimed. “We could be the Night Terrors. Unmarried men only, and all paying into a pot to keep us that way. It’s a sort of tontine, with the last bachelor collecting.”

  “What do you need?” Stillman put his hand on Garfleet’s arm, drawing the man’s attention back to Clive’s business.

  “Tomorrow night, I’d like you to attend the opening gala at the Rotunda in Leicester Square.” He pushed five tickets across the table, and each man picked one up.

  �
��Langdon has a bet on that at White’s. He thinks the subject is Thermopylae.” Battenskill tucked the ticket into his breast pocket.

  “How much do you have on it, Roland?” Clive asked.

  “Thirty quid.”

  Stillman whistled.

  “If you are going to help me, I need you to withdraw your bets,” Clive said somberly. “As it stands now, there’s little chance she will forgive me. But if it looks like I’ve told anyone about her business, I’ll have no chance at all.”

  “She?” The men leaned forward, even more interested.

  “The proprietor of the Rotunda, Miss Lena Frost.” Clive started cautiously, uncertain how to explain what he needed without revealing too much of Lena’s situation. “You all have experience in difficult situations.”

  “Look at him—become a diplomat after all these years,” Garfleet joked.

  “Let him talk, Robert. If this were a public bar, you’d be more discreet,” Battenskill chided.

  “Go to the opening gala and make sure nothing happens.” Clive looked at them hopefully. “She’s warned me off strongly enough that I don’t dare anger her more by going myself.”

  “What do you expect might happen?” Stillman asked, and Clive overviewed the murders and his investigations, ending with the discovery of the gravediggers’ bodies.

  “If the men you were searching for have been found, so to speak, why do you think she’d be in danger?” Langdon asked quietly.

  “It’s a feeling that I can’t shake.” Clive shrugged, feeling helpless and frustrated. “There’s an inheritance, but I don’t know if she intends to claim it. And a stepmother who might wish to do her harm to keep it.”

  “An inheritance that she doesn’t intend to claim? What’s the story there?” Stillman waited for an answer, but Clive didn’t offer one. The truth was that he hadn’t asked when he had the chance.

  “I just need you to be there. My eyes and ears—and hands—if anything goes wrong.”